


gather near the concrete

by Lilaciliraya



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Stiles Has Panic Attacks, Stiles-centric, but second person, i like it because that way there's always kind of an unreliable narrator, perception and all that jazz, still stiles pov, thats how i write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:44:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilaciliraya/pseuds/Lilaciliraya
Summary: You are born with two left feet and with your thumbs sewn on backwards. You stumble through life as though you just need extra practice, moving much too much and too fast.You learn to get up and up and up only because your default is falling down.You are clumsy; you are crazy; you are always too loud.





	gather near the concrete

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ten minutes ago and I'm going to post this without editing anything because I don't like it enough to fix it but maybe someone wants to read it. So. Here ya go. I don't even watch this show anymore I just like thinking about Stiles :/

You are born with two left feet and with your thumbs sewn on backwards. You stumble through life as though you just need extra practice, moving much too much and too fast.

 

You learn to get up and up and up only because your default is falling down.

 

You are clumsy; you are crazy; you are always too loud.

 

You are born into motion and from that moment on you never stop. You talk your way into knots and sometimes you keep going until you talk yourself back out.

 

Your limbs tremble and jump with restrained energy- you always have too much.

 

.

 

Sometimes you fill your cup and keep going until the water spills over the edge just to feel a little less alone.

 

Your father learns to sigh and turn away from the mess because he's figured out that he can't help, not really. Your mother pretends not to see the puddle on the counter, likes to smile at her perfectly normal son, the reflection in the microwave door that's all bent up, the one that doesn't exist.

 

.

 

When you first go to school you are so excited, all eager grins and wide sweeping arms.

 

When you meet the other kids you trip over yourself and stutter out half-formed words in an effort to match the speed of your thoughts. Nobody else understands anything you are saying.

 

You think maybe it will help if you talk louder.

 

.

 

When your mother gets sick you like to go to the hospital with her.

 

You don't understand the concept of illness, of death, of slow and steady decline, of eternal silence.

 

You like to play with the stethoscope. Your heart beats faster faster faster with every breath you take. Sometimes you are scared you'll pop open and burst out over the walls.

 

Then the nurse brings in a cart of tools and you fall over your toes trying to find something new to examine.

 

.

 

You have your first panic attack at the hospital the day that she dies.

 

Your whole world speeds up around you, catches up to the speed of your body, then the speed of your mind, keeps accelerating until it leaves even you behind. You feel things around you moving forward but you are wading through a pool of water, of not-water, through a pool of something even thicker.

 

Your heart is beating so fast you don’t even need a tool to hear it.

 

You need to grab your head to stop your stomach from jumping out of your ears. You don't throw up, not this time.

 

There's a man at the other end of the hall, you see him walk around the corner just as you lift your head and the panic subsides enough to process something other than your own existence.

 

He's walking away, and he looks kind of like your father, who you haven't seen since he became the only parent you have left.

 

You wonder if maybe it is your father, if he saw you and turned his back in disgust, walked away because it was you, it was you that was there, it was you that wore her out, it was you that killed your mother with your never-ending inside out and backwards.

 

You wonder if maybe your father blames you, too.

 

.

 

Eventually, the memory loses the part where you're wondering. It kind of just shifts into fact.

 

.

 

The first time you go home with your entire family by your side- your dad, just your dad and you- the perceived silence presses in on you so fast you think for a minute that you've followed your mother.

 

Your breathing speeds up and your heart echoes in your ears and you remember about what happened in the hospital hallway and you think it might be happening again and your eyes go wide and you freeze in the doorway and just before you drop to the floor and curl up in a ball of too much your father wraps his arms around you.

 

He hugs you even though you don't deserve it and you feel such instant relief that you're sure you would have landed in a heap on the floor if not for your father's strong arms.

 

He tells you that he loves you and he tells you that it’s just you two now but you'll be okay. He makes everything warm.

 

You can't bring yourself to ask him if he was the man, the one in hall, the one that walked away when you thought you were dying or if you were just seeing things.

 

You don't think you really want to know.

 

.

 

From then on it’s like you have to make up for her absence. You are everywhere at once, flailing limbs and clicking teeth.

 

The energy builds and builds and builds up inside you until it turns back around on you and gnaws away at your chest with panic. After an attack you are always so drained that you could almost pass as normal.

 

So.

 

You don't really mind them as much as you should.

 

.

 

You don't remember your mother's funeral.

 

.

 

Three months after your mother's death finds you curled up in the back of your father's closet with a bottle of perfume clutched to your chest and tears streaming down your face. You are shaking so badly that your elbows knock the wall behind you.

 

Your father opens the door, a bottle in his hand, and looks down at you like he is staring into your grave. You suck in air against its will like it is alive and struggling to stay that way, a strained noise echoing through the spinning room.

 

He closes his eyes for what feels like hours before turning back and closing the door behind him.

 

You don't remember leaving the closet that day.

 

That time you know you aren't making it up.

.

 

At school one day you see a kid sitting out the daily recess kickball game and you are instantly at his side. You don't play kickball either; the other kids don't let you join anymore because you never stay in position.

 

You jump up and down and spring around all jittery limbs and ask him why he's not playing because kickball is fun you know and you'd be playing but you're not supposed to anymore because last week they told you to play far left and by the time someone kicked the ball over there you were chasing a grasshopper off of right field and the grass is more educational anyways so you don't really mind too much but you think if you have a choice that kickball is the better option here so what are you doing not playing, kid?

 

He doesn't answer within milliseconds of your gasping breath that signals the end of your sentence, so you stumble your way back in front of his face to find him staring at you with wide eyes.

 

The first word Scott says to you is ‘woah,’ all slow and full of admiration.

 

You can't remember your mother ever looking at you like that.

 

.

 

Scott is your new best friend and he has asthma and he's always getting yelled at to slow down, just like you, except that he already does everything really really slowly.

 

He's impressed by your speed, your never ending breath, the energy that coils around your form like a spring, ready to launch you in a new direction at any given moment.

 

You've finally found someone who can keep up with your movements and your mind, that can fill in the blanks when you skip some words to get more meaning out faster.

 

You'd do anything for him.

 

.

 

You pull Scott out into the forest one night and you just happen to stumble over a dead body and a whole new outlook on the world.

 

You find out about all of the things trying to kill you and you don't even blink. Of course you've gotten yourself into something like this.

 

You talk too much and too loud and you can't help but to trip all over yourself trying to get it right, trying to deal with this new reality.

 

The pack doesn't like you at first because you're too much all the time and not enough of what you should be.

 

You don't tell your dad about the supernatural. You don't think he really wants to know.

 

.

 

You were born with two left feet and with your thumbs sewn on backwards. By the time you finish high school your best friend’s a werewolf.

 

You're the normal one, the unassuming human.

 

Nobody even looks at you twice, and maybe you killed your mother but you help save people now, including your father, so you think it evens out.

 

.

 

Nobody's really how they're supposed to be anyways.

 

.


End file.
